Wednesday, October 30, 2013

And that, my friends, is how to use a semi-colon. Last year I ordered printouts of the Oatmeal grammar posters and stuck them on the inside door of the ladies' loos at work. Now, a whole generation of female Vietnamese scientists are really really good at punctuating.

That's about where I feel I am right now, too - at the semi-colon. We haven't quite put a full-stop at the end of Vietnam, and we haven't put a capital letter at the front of Saudi Arabia either. We are stuck somewhere in between, waiting for the visa.

Or rather, waiting for the documents we need the Vietnamese government to provide us so that we can submit the visa application. It's an extremely arduous process. Right now, we have been waiting for 4 weeks for the justice department to provide us with a police-check document for Mr Martin. Ever sexist, the Saudi Arabian government only requires the police check for the man - even though the main applicant for the visa in this case is a woman.